Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

So last week we went on vacation to Hilton Head, SC. We had no real plans for the week which made the vacation all the more relaxing. We stayed in the house that the Fop’s company owns and had a grand time doing very little. The view out the back of the house was lovely and peaceful, especially after the thunderstorm that swept over the island one afternoon. The house itself was also beautiful but not enough for me to have thought to take pictures of it apparently. It made for a very easy and comfortable vacation. I needed a break and it all worked out very well.

So, I’ve never really spent any time farther south than where I live now (outside Philadelphia). The differences in flora and fauna are fascinating.

The first morning a fluttering leaf on the railing on the back deck kept tickling my peripheral vision. When I finally looked up from my book, there was a little green lizard strutting his stuff! (Hurray for zoom lenses, by the way!) When the Fop got up, he identified the creature I’d photographed as an anole. We saw a couple more anoles as well as some skinks skittering about over the course of the week. I also got photos of a black striped lizard we couldn’t identify.

There were lots of birds as well - ravens, cranes, egrets (I think), pelicans! And they all seemed to enjoy hanging out in the backyard of the house. Living in Suburban Hell[tm] has given me a significantly higher appreciation for random wildlife.

These pink flowers were everywhere. I’m still not sure what they are but I’ll look them up eventually. I’m not usually a fan of pink, but they were gorgeous against the dark green leaves. I’d never really spent quality time hanging out with Spanish Moss either. It’s fascinating stuff. I was actually able to see tiny green leaves at the tips of some of the strands of moss. I was fascinated at least. The bizarre mix of trees was fun too. I was of course familiar and accustomed to some of the pine trees but the evergreens from the palm family side by side with the pines struck me as odd. Of course, I’m from the North so palm trees are rather novel anyway. I’m easily amused by new landscapes or even just slightly different ones!

The weather was lovely most of the week. There were some scattered showers here and there but over all it was pretty lovely. The first day and last day were humid and a bit icky, but the middle days were drier and pleasant and not too terribly hot for my snow-girl self.

There was, of course, lots of ocean and beach. Which means I picked up lots of shells. Lots and lots of shells. Perhaps too many shells? Nah…

Oh! We also went golfing… mini-golfing! PIRATE mini-golfing! It was a great deal of silly fun on the last full day when the weather wasn’t really all that great. (It was the day the air was all muggy and smelled like wood smoke…) The pirate mini-golf place also had koi. There’s nothing cooler than pirates with koi ponds!

I did get some small but interesting sunburns. I got the classic sunburn on the tops of my feet on day 2 but not so badly that I worried about it. My arms cooked. The backs of my calves got pretty red. Little pieces of skin where my swimsuit rubbed off my sun block also got red. I came back with many more freckles than I went down there with.

So that was a very rambling way of saying we had a lovely, mellow time.

The full but edited set of vacation photos is over here at Flickr.

tags: birds, flowers, hilton head island, lizards, ocean, shells, south carolina, travel, vacation